How to Break the Broken
by SarahSwan7
Summary: Ros is tasked to investigate a string of murders in the Old Town of Dubrovnik and meets a stranger who claims he can help... Set around Series 4, with 5 chapters. Recognisable characters belong to Kudos, the rest are my own.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello! After a recent holiday in the gorgeous Dubrovnik (hence delays in updating my other stories) I was inspired to write a little something. This first chapter is just setting things up but there will be some Ros in the next chapter! **

It was a little past 11pm and the evening was still buzzing with life. People roamed the long street clasping ice-creams or chattered and munched in restaurants or sat on some of the many stone steps that provided a convenient seat. Crowds were good at providing anonymity for what he was about to do.

He hadn't brought in a weapon – the entrance to the Old Town still had guards stationed outside, mainly as a tourist attraction but it still made him uncomfortable. He'd have to be a bit more inventive.

It was easy enough to locate the man himself, surrounded by the tallest and most tanned girls and the heaviest stench of alcohol. Once glance in his direction made his fists clench but he couldn't act yet.

A wine glass was the perfect choice. He smoothly slipped one into his hands whilst passing a little restaurant and followed the man. He was approaching a bar, which would provide enough noise and darkness for this.

The music was thumping now, laughter ringing, and that was when he chose to smash the rim of the glass against the wall, leaving behind some deadly sharp shards attached to the stem growing warm in his hand.

One hand clamped down on the shoulder. One swift motion with the glass, bringing it into contact with the man's back. The hand moved from the shoulder to his mouth to quieten the screams.

He threw the bloodied glass against the wall, watching it shatter into tiny fragments that glinted in the light of the moon. He listened to the choking last breaths of the man strewn in front of him. And then, casually wiping a smear of blood onto the leg of his jeans, he wove effortlessly and untraceably back into the crowds.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Another short chapter but they do get longer and more interesting, I promise!**

The bus system wasn't particularly difficult to understand but Ros ensured she was at the stop early to increase her chances of getting a seat instead of being subjected to a sweaty armpit in the face from a traveller who obviously didn't know of a substance called deodorant. Public transport was something she loathed and so when she successfully managed to grab a seat Ros was very relieved, slipping on her sunglasses and gluing her gaze to the houses that blurred beside her as the bus ambled towards the city.

The man at the reception of her hotel (only 3 star – Six' budgets had been a little stretched lately) told her that the Old Town of Dubrovnik was not only a mere twenty minutes or so away but provided the best spot for eating and socialising. The latter was a topic that didn't interest her in the slightest but the thought of a decent meal after the dry egg sandwich she was given on the plane was difficult to refuse.

The large woman who had crammed herself next to Ros left at the next stop, leaving a vacant seat and several pushy travellers intent on getting it. However, a man that Ros had hardly noticed moved swiftly and parked himself next to her without so much a glance in his fellow candidates' direction. Ros looked at him from behind her sunglasses without titling her head as she sized him up.

Probably British. His watch was from a brand in London and his lowered head to prevent eye contact was one that Ros had encountered several times on the Tube. He had the complexion of an undercooked pancake – a little brown in places but mainly pale – and Ros knew that only Englishmen possessed such sporadic tanning abilities. His hair was dark brown and messy, eyes hidden behind sunglasses perched on the bridge of his slightly sunburnt nose.

"Hey," he said, and Ros instinctively ducked her head. It had not been her intention to interact with this stranger and now she couldn't back out of making small talk without being openly hostile or pretending that she didn't speak English (two methods which she had attempted in the past when faced with talkative strangers but unfortunately with limited success).

"Hello," she said curtly, moving her eyes to the window. In the glassy reflection she watched him peel his sunglasses from his face.

"How long have you been in Dubrovnik?" he asked.

_Ugh, no._ "A few days. Little sight-seeing tour," she said smoothly.

"Speak any Croatian?" he asked.

Ros was tempted to try out her pronunciation on a couple of the insults she had learnt from the language book she had bought from the airport but decided against it, in case the man was in fact fluent.

"Nope," she said shortly. He grinned and spouted a phrase with an appalling accent which made Ros raise her eyebrows.

"Am I supposed to be impressed that you memorised 'Welcome to Croatia' from a travel book?" she drawled, fanning her face with the map of the town that she had picked up from the hotel reception in an attempt to dispel some of the heat in the pressure cooker of a bus which was now so crammed with people that an elbow to the face or chest was completely unavoidable.

He laughed then, heartily, and shrugged. "Nice to have a fellow Brit around, I suppose."

Ros' skin bristled. "What gave me away– my impeccable manners?" She timely offered a glare to someone behind her who had probably nudged her shoulder by accident but would still receive a practically lethal dose of Myers disapproval.

"The fact that you were adamant to avoid conversation," he said matter-of-factly, tapping his flip-flopped feet on the floor in an irritating rhythm.

"Why didn't you take the hint and sit silently then?" Ros asked sweetly as the bus slowed to a halt outside the entrance to the Old Town.

"It's been a while since I've talked to someone like me. I'm Tom, by the way."

Before Ros had the chance to unload her sardonic twist on the British favourite 'Pleasure to meet you', Tom had stepped quickly off the bus and blended instantly with the rest of the people piling out of the vehicle and heading into the town. Ros tried to locate his tall, broad-shouldered stance among the crowds but without success, frowning at how effortlessly he had managed to disappear.

_Someone like me._

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Maybe he was on drugs. Or in dire need of psychological help.

Either way, Ros had a mission to complete and she wouldn't let a rambling stranger become a source of distraction.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Bartolomej Petrović."_

_Richard Clayworth slapped the file onto her desk._

"_What about him?" Ros asked, picking it up and flicking through the pages with little interest. "Looks like your regular Croatian citizen."_

"_Except we believe that he's been behind the recent bout of murders in Dubrovnik," replied Richard, perching on her desk. Her boss was about ten years her senior but rather easy to work with – not too jovial or too cold but a happy medium. Today, however, he looked stressed. _

_Ros cocked an eyebrow. "We?"_

"_We've had tabs on his because he withdrew 600,000 Kuna from a bank account in his name which was set up three weeks ago. Since then, five people have been found dead in the Old Town of Dubrovnik."_

"_Blackmail money?" Ros suggested. _

"_Perhaps. He hasn't used it to splash out on expensive weaponry – all of the weapons he used seemed to be stolen from the Old Town. A smashed glass, a knife, et cetera."_

"_Maybe he's just been doing some pricey purchasing on Ebay," Ros suggested drily, cocking an eyebrow. "The victims?"_

"_All male, all Croatian citizens. Interestingly, all on record for petty things – excessive gambling, speeding points, handbag theft. Nothing that seems to link the five of them other than their slight stumbles in moral laxity, and certainly nothing substantial enough to warrant their own murder."_

"_Hm," Ros muttered to herself. "Both parents killed, no siblings, devout Catholic. Acting out of grief? Or religious purposes?"_

_Richard's brow wrinkled. "Hard to say so soon. And two of the victims were also Catholic, so I don't see why he'd kill his own."_

"_Why were you so suspicious about the money? asked Ros, flicking through his bank records. "Just looks like he's been saving up."_

"_He lives a simple life – why suddenly make a massive withdrawal like that? Anyway, you'll find out soon enough."_

"_How's that?" Ros asked, although she was already fully aware of the answer._

"_Fancy a trip to Dubrovnik?"_

The smattering of CCTV that they had managed to conjure up showed that Petrović had left his house every night for the past three weeks to head to the Old Town of Dubrovnik. With high walls and darkened alleys it was the perfect place for a sly murder and getaway.

Finding Petrović, however, would be an altogether more difficult task.

It was her first trip to Croatia and Ros hadn't faced any proper difficulties so far because of the relaxed atmosphere and the fact that most shop owners and restaurant workers could speak good English. However, navigating around the Old Town was proving a little more difficult than she had first anticipated. It consisted of one wide street made of stone that had been worn smooth by countless feet with small streets branching off from either side. She had arrived just after six to give herself plenty of time to familiarise herself with the place before it got really busy. Also, all of the bodies had been discovered around midnight each time so Ros assumed that Bartolomej wouldn't strike for a good few hours, if he even chose tonight for another spot of murdering.

She had been rather reluctant to accept this mission at first, suggesting calmly to Richard that it was a matter for the Croatian police and that it was quite frankly a bloody waste of Six's time, but he had been rather insistent for her to be the one to investigate Bartolomej's little killing spree. Maybe it was a test to check her operational abilities. Good: she'd be sure to pass with flying colours. There was nothing Ros Myers hated more than being underestimated and this was her chance to prove her worth beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Once Ros reached the far edge of the town which consisted of a harbour with several expensive-looking yachts and the wide expanse of glittering blue sea, she retraced her steps and explored a few side streets, map still glued in hand but becoming more familiar with where she was. At around seven she returned to the entrance of the town and sat on the edge of a round water fountain, watching the tourists begin to pile in. Just opposite her she saw the last of the day's visitors clamber down from the steep stone steps that led up to the city walls. Ros had memorised this from her travel brochure – _The walls that circle most of the old city are almost 25 metres high at their tallest point and just less than 2,000 metres in length. The bulk of the existing walls were constructed in the 15__th__ century with continual extensions to ensure their strength added until around the 17__th__ century._

Ros decided to indulge in a little people-watching in order to kill time. A man in a red cap was offering pizza vouchers enthusiastically. A group of friends strolled lazily, cradling cones stacked with different coloured scoops of dripping ice-cream. An old lady was fumbling in her purse to give a child some change for the sweet shop. A young woman was smiling as her male friend slipped his jacket around her shoulders.

_Ugh._ Ros went back to the travel brochure.

_Restaurant Klarisa is located in the heart of the Old Town of Dubrovnik, near the Great Onofrio fountain._

Ros got to her feet, moving down the stone steps of that very fountain on which she had been sitting to locate the source of the delicious scents of fresh seafood. The restaurant didn't look too expensive and there were very few people there so early, making it a tempting place to dine, but then a large group of loud couples barrelled past and made a beeline to the front of the queue. Ros almost flinched at the thought of hearing their loud conversations for the duration of her evening and mooched away, switching her mind back to the mission and Richard's instructions: _Observe from a distance. Is he panicked, nervous? Or unfazed? Follow him – see where he takes you. Maintain a good distance; make sure he doesn't see you. If you see him gain access to a weapon, stop him killing again by whatever means necessary._

Her orders were easy enough whenever she actually managed to locate Bartolomej, but for the meantime Ros bought an ice-cream and sat on the steps of a towering marble church. Ice-cream eating was rather a childish indulgence and it was overpriced in such a thriving tourist environment but every third person was eating one and it was paramount for her to blend in; especially as the man on the bus, Tom, had already noticed her sticking out like a sore thumb in the crowd of tanned and relaxed locals and tourists.

Tom the stranger. The slight shudder had nothing to do with the sudden coldness of the ice-cream or the fact she'd forgotten to pack a light jacket. He'd looked at her like she was exactly who she was: an intelligence officer. Maybe he was Six too; back-up from Richard. That thought made her jaw clench – she was more than capable of carrying out this operation.

Someone walking up the stairs brushed past her and she was about to say something rude at their lack of acknowledgement of her presence before biting her tongue: it was Petrović.

Feeling it inappropriate and plain odd to be chomping on strawberry gelato in church, Ros threw the ice-cream in the bin and moved silently into the towering, majestic building. A couple of Japanese tourists took a photo a second of every inch of the place but for once Ros couldn't be too scathing at their enthusiasm as the building was rather beautiful, with a high ceiling and majestic paintings and statues. And there, hunched over in one of the pews towards the front, was Petrović. Ros took a seat at the back and glanced around the room before pulling out a camera of her own and blending into the typical tourist disguise, snapping brief pictures of the walls and the paintings. When Petrović clambered to his feet and headed to the door, Ros took a final picture and then began reading the leaflet in her lap which she had picked up by the door on the way in. His gaze barely passed over her but if he had clocked Ros' presence his judgement was likely to be exactly what she wanted – she was just a tourist.

She couldn't afford to leave a long time gap between their exits from the church in case of losing him again and so after a mere ten seconds Ros stood up silently and moved back outside, feet drumming down the stone steps and back onto the street. After a few seconds of successfully tailing him, her peace was shattered by the sound of her mobile ringing. Still walking and swearing a little under her breath (she never remembered to put the damn thing on silent mode) Ros snapped open her phone with an irritated "Yes?"

"Ros, it's Richard. We've found something else; something vital."

"Go on," she said, keeping a steely eye on the back of Petrović's head.

"His real name isn't Bartolomej Petrović, it's Bartolomej Vujović. He changed his surname as to not be associated with his parents, the notorious Anto and Agneza Vujović.

"He's the son of the Croatian version of Bonnie and Clyde?" Ros asked incredulously. Murders aside, he seemed like a quiet, innocuous man, nothing like his flamboyant and reckless parents who had put their home town of Split in constant danger and suspicion until they were finally and thankfully killed in a car crash a couple of years ago.

"He is. These murders could be in their name."

"But if he didn't want to be associated with them to the point that he changed his name, why is he acting like them now?" questioned Ros.

"That's the million Kuna question: ask him. And there's something else."

"What?" snapped Ros, not caring one bit for Richard's tendency to dramatically drag out bad news.

"Of the 600,000 Kuna he withdrew from the bank, 500,000 has been split into 5 lots of 100,000 and distributed to five families: the families of his victims."

"That doesn't make any sense," Ros almost hissed, keeping her pace steady despite her desire to sprint up behind Bartolomej and demand answers.

"My guess is that he's trying to cancel out the bad of the murder with the good of financial support for the family in such a troubled time."

"And my guess is that he's psychological impaired," Ros replied.

"Whatever he is, he's dangerous. Tread carefully, Ros." Richard ended the call in his typically abrupt manner, leaving Ros to contemplate what the hell was going on amongst the bustling crowds as night descended upon the city. The crowds parted and within a second Bartolomej had slipped away. Ros swore under her breath and kept walking.

A sudden realisation hit her like a tonne of bricks: 100,000 to each family and 600,000 Kuna in total, but only 5 victims so far...

He was going to kill again - and she'd just lost him.

"Need a hand?"


	4. Chapter 4

Ros heard the familiar voice as someone fell into step beside her and suppressed a groan.

"I'm fine, actually," she lied as smoothly as she was able, but he wasn't buying it.

"You lost him."

Ros wasn't expecting that reply but she lied smoothly nonetheless: "I've haven't the slightest clue what you're on about, so if you'll excuse me-"

"Bartolomej Vujović, Old Town murderer. He's gonna strike again so you were tailing him."

It wasn't often that Ros struggled with words but Tom had caught her red-handed, and she couldn't summon an appropriately cold response before his face broke into a grin.

"I've got him. 20m ahead, grey shirt. He ditched his jacket."

Ros scanned the crowds. Thankfully, he was there. Annoyingly, Tom hadn't lost him and she had.

"Whatever the hell you're doing getting involved with this, this operation belongs to Six and I'm the designated officer, therefore I outrank you," she told him rather sullenly, to which he just broke into a grin.

"Okay, boss."

"I'm not your-"

"Two people will make tailing easier," he wheedled. He'd made a good point – the evening was just getting started and more and more tourists were piling onto the streets, making it increasingly difficult to maintain eyeball. Tom was also wearing rather inconspicuous clothes and so wouldn't attract unwanted attention, and he was several inches taller than her which would be good for keeping tabs on Bartolomej.

Ros titled her chin upwards and fixed her eyes on his face. "Fine. You're with me."

"Aren't I lucky," he said sarcastically in response to Ros' brazen, instant dislike of him. "I don't even know your name."

"It's Ros," she said, her words clipped and ones that clearly indicated the chit-chat was over.

Either Bartolomej knew he was being tailed and was trying to shake them by tediously strolling again and again up little side streets, or he just enjoyed really boring and repetitive walks. Either way, a blister was bubbling under Ros' toe thanks to the dreaded flip-flops she had purchased in order to pass as a holidayer, and the silence between her and Tom was beginning to suffocate. Sure, she didn't want to talk to him and had no particular interest in his life and his wife and his inevitable sob-stories, but it was rather unnerving how he too seemed completely content with the silence. A part of Ros longed for him to chip in with a comment of some sort just so that she could snort derisively or ruthlessly criticise him.

The next time that Tom spoke, however, there wasn't much time for Ros' favourite pastime of playing (and winning) a good game of one upmanship.

"He just pocketed a knife from that table," Tom murmured, picking up his pace ever so slightly and gluing his gaze solely on the back of Bartolomej's head. Sure enough, when they passed the restaurant table where he had been mere seconds earlier the steak knife from one place setting was absent.

"He's about to kill – we've got to stop him now," Tom said under his breath in Ros' direction.

She shook her head. "We need to find out who the target is."

"And give them the risk of a knife in the back?" Tom asked scathingly. "No. We take him now."

"What was it I said about outranking?" Ros said fiercely. "Keep walking and shut up, and if you don't do exactly as I say then MI6 will find your pricey, pretty little cottage in the country that you share with your lovely wife and smash every bloody window of the place."

Tom smirked. "Nice judgement skills."

"You're wearing an expensive watch and a wedding ring," Ros said briefly. "Now just do as I say."

Ros watched Bartolomej duck suddenly into a side street and she gestured for Tom to stay still while she followed – he opened his mouth to protest but not before Ros had disappeared into the darkness that the tall buildings and night sky provided. There were fewer people than on the main street but enough to provide Ros with adequate cover in case Bartolomej decided to turn around. In front of both of them, a tall man in a crumpling suit smoked a cigarette, the ash tumbling onto the smooth stone. At a glance he looked wealthy and arrogant and upon further inspection Ros noticed a smudge of red lipstick on his jaw. His phone rang and he plucked it from a pocket, turning away from them. Ros watched Bartolomej pull the knife from the pocket of his jeans and twirl it in one hand, about to close the space between himself and the man before Ros said loudly: "Bartolomej Vujović."

Maybe it was the shock of getting caught or the unfamiliarity of hearing his real surname that made him drop the knife, watching dumbly as it clattered to the ground. The man on the phone seemed suddenly aware of the two dangerous-looking strangers so close to him and mumbled "I'm gonna have to call you back" to whoever was on the receiving end of his call before snapping the screen shut.

"Who on Earth are you?!"

His question was never provided with an answer as Bartolomej broke out into a petrified sprint, throwing a glance at Ros over his shoulder before focussing fully on pounding his feet away from her as fast as he was able to.

"Tom!" Ros called loudly over her shoulder, chasing Bartolomej back onto the main street. Tom caught up with her quickly and calmly, having seemingly not even broken into a sweat, and together they weaved as quickly as they were able amongst the people, keeping Bartolomej at the centre of their vision.

"What are you doing?" cried a heavily-accented voice as Bartolomej pushed past, taking the steps up to the old walls that circled the town two steps at a time.

"What's he playing at?" Ros hissed, flapping her ID card at the man guarding the stairs quickly before moving up them.

"But- it's too dark! It's not safe!" the man protested as Tom jogged past him.

"Safe isn't really on our job description," Tom replied, following Ros up the steep stone steps.

"He must know there's no escape," Ros said as Tom reached her side. She was right – the ancient walls that surrounded the city were perfect for sight-seeing and picture taking but there was only one way up (the stairs they had just taken) and the only other route back down was a steep and definitely lethal drop from the towering walls onto the streets below.

"Let's find him," Tom said simply, jogging soundlessly along the stony ground in the direction which Bartolomej had headed. With the multiple twists and turns of the path coupled with the fact that it was a dark night with barely any starlight due to unusually thick cloud coverage, even though he had been only seconds ahead he now appeared to have vanished completely. Ros focussed her eyes directly ahead of her and didn't try to remember that they were now very high above the city with relatively uneven ground to walk upon and a killer lurking somewhere. His target was probably relatively safe now, but she doubted that Bartolomej would take kindly to being frog-marched out of the city by the security services.

This was not going to plan, and Ros didn't take kindly to the feeling of failure.

"So," she said to Tom, trying to mask the strange sensation of being a little afraid with some light conversation. "How did you get into all this?"

Tom smirked. "I signed up for it."

"And you're not sitting in the air conditioned Thames House office because?"

A frown settled itself on his forehead and he dragged his eyes away from her face, his mouth set in a hard line.

"I woke up to what the service was really asking of me."

Had his voice not sounded so broken, Ros would have snorted in derision. His sincerity was a little startling seeing as their line of work consisted mainly of lying, and Ros knew she would never be so honest if he had asked her such a personal question. She couldn't understand what he meant though. The security service was the only work she could imagine doing, despite the hardships, and his lack of faith was surreal but also a little worrying. She was still relatively new to the job and obviously wasn't naive enough to think things would always go swimmingly, but Tom held experience in his expression and a grief in his eyes which was new to Ros and she vowed that if she ever encountered something unforeseeable and terrible during her time as a spy she would hide it firmly away. Sarcasm and brazenness might not make her everybody's friend, but it was better than being looked at like a kicked puppy.

Suddenly aware that she hadn't replied for several seconds, Ros said "So why are you chasing Vujović?"

"He's not an innocent. I'm good at this, unless there's a moral quandary ticking away that everyone else just seems to ignore. Vujović is a killer - I'm fine with stopping him."

"By killing him?" Ros questioned.

"I'm fine with stopping him," he said again. His tone wasn't one of trying to convince her; it was a statement. And judging by his knowledge and tailing abilities and other operational skills so far, he did know what he was doing. Ros felt as if he was competition now and stood up taller, throwing a bored look across the sea and the yachts looming in the harbour and stopping for a second, peering into a corner where the path veered round to the right to check for Bartolomej's potential hiding spot.

"He's still moving," Ros commented. "What if he makes it all the way around and goes back down the steps into the crowds?" Shit. She hadn't thought of that – Bartolomej knew this place like the back of his hand and would be able to navigate this path more quickly than her and Tom.

"I told the guy guarding the steps to ring the local authorities and have them stationed in case he does," Tom said.

Ros eyed him critically. "Now we'll have PC Plod sticking his nose in. Brilliant."

She was a tad jealous though of his operational consideration, whereas she had been intent on the chase.

_Damn him._

Tom disappeared around another corner and then peeked round again, one finger against his lips. Ros slowed her pace and quietened her breathing. Tom stepped back round the corner. For a few seconds, the entire city seemed to hold its breath.

"It's over, Vujović," she heard Tom mutter, and then a grunt. She rounded the corner and saw Tom pinning Bartolomej's arms behind his back.

"Let go of me!" he demanded, struggling against the obviously superior strength of his opponent. "Let go!"

"You've killed five people over the last three weeks, Bartolomej: why?" Ros' voice cut through the darkness.

He leaned forward, his face illuminated slightly by a lamplight glowing below them on a street. "Those animals?" He spat on the ground, not before Tom could move his unfortunately flip-flopped foot away. "They steal and they lie and they drag society down. They give my country a bad name. They are not good. Some of them pretend to be religious – they are not. They don't know of a purpose in life, a belief, something to be better for."

"As moving as that is, I doubt a court will favour it over the fact you killed five men," Ros replied coolly.

Bartolomej shrugged but his voice was still laced with venom. "They are no loss to society. Society needs to be clean. There is no room for people who give nothing back, people who drink away their money and spent nights with prostitutes. These men are poisonous!"

"What gives you the right to decide who is worthy or not?" Ros questioned him.

"I believe in things. I believe in family, friendships, God. A purpose in life."

"And your purpose in life is what? Killing?" Tom asked, wrenching his arm a little harder behind his back. "'Thou shalt not murder' – heard of it?"

"Don't you dare talk to me about morality. Who have you lost, spy man?" Bartolomej managed to spit despite the obvious pain he was in. "Were your parents murdered? Did your neighbours turn against you? Do you have any idea what pain really feels like?"

Ros watched Tom's face flicker almost unnoticeably before he regained control.

"Yeah, I do. I just know how to handle it better than you do."

"I gave money to the families of the victims," he murmured. "I know better than anyone that it isn't the fault of the family. No-one showed such consideration to me though, when my parents were ruining lives. They thought I was the same."

"So why are you killing people?" Ros barked incredulously.

"Because I'm helping lives!" he roared, but beneath the loudness of his voice was a detectable vulnerability, as if he prayed that what he was saying was really true. "I don't kill indiscriminately like my parents did. I don't want people to drink until they die, or have affairs, or steal or cheat or lie. I'm getting rid of people like that who don't give a second thought to decency, or hope, or love. I'm improving the world, and for that blood must be spilled."

Tom shook his head. "No. Whenever blood is spilled, you know you've taken a wrong turn."

"Give yourself up, Bartolomej," Ros tried to reason. "You don't get to choose the choices people make. It's not your right or your purpose to try and make them change."

"And who are you then?" he hissed. "You've never manipulated and lied and used people for your own cause?"

"It's over, Bartolomej," Ros said, ignoring his previous comment although it was rattling around in her head. "We have to deal with you now."

"It is over," Bartolomej replied, but his tone wasn't one of having given up. "But not in the way that you want it to be. As you say-" he breathed out a smirk -"you can't decide what people choose."

Ros had barely taken a step before Bartolomej pulled his arm away and flung it into Tom's stomach, hoisted one leg up onto the wall and lifted his arms to the sky before moving his feet forward, sailing towards the concrete below and making contact with the rough stone with an audible and shudder-inducing thud. She watched Tom gasping for air, arms across his stomach, and the irritation but also despair in his eyes at having been outwitted. Ros moved her gaze over the wall onto the floor below. He had fallen into the wreckage of an old house, the only furniture some crumbling bricks and weeds, the roof having been blown off when war came to this country under twenty years ago. The old town had been bombed but many original structures remained, with a scattering of more modern buildings in places, built after the fight had finished.

"It looks odd, don't you think?" Tom said quietly, coming to stand beside her. Ros noticed how his eyes didn't glance in the direction of Bartolomej's body, a broken smudge of the city's history now.

"What is?" she asked.

He gestured to the towering roofs of the houses that spread across the town. "Old structures. Beautiful and undamaged. And then new ones." He pointed to a roof with clean, well-shaped tiles of a brighter colour than the other red, weather-worn pieces. "The city plugging gaps in the wreckage. Making everything look perfect again and moving on."

"You make it sound like a bad thing – healing scars," Ros replied a little sceptically.

He moved his eyes to her face. "It's not: it's necessary. Forgetting those scars is the fault."

"Don't get all sentimental, or I might follow in Bartolomej's footsteps," Ros said jokingly, but perhaps her tone wasn't light enough - Tom looked at her as if she had overstepped the mark and his next words were empty of the slight warmth his voice had adapted to. "You can do the paperwork. It's your op, after all."

He started mooching back in the direction they had came, his silhouette almost merging with the shadows before Ros' curiosity made her call out: "What will you do now?"  
A flicker of a grin made its way to his face. "Back to the cottage with the wife."

"And all of this? What we do?" Ros asked.

"I do one-off things now. I choose. It's liberating, not being told what to do by the Service," he told her.

"Doesn't that make you purposeless?" she asked, out of inquisitiveness rather than deliberately trying to be insulting.

"Nah," he said. "I know exactly who I am and what I'm doing now. It makes more sense than anything ever has."

"Okay then, enigmatic stranger," she said. He grinned. "If you're so intent on do-gooding, why have you been so alive throughout this entire operation?"

"I guess some things you can't hide. It's thrilling, being a spy. I miss it. But not enough to want to be one again. I like being the enigmatic stranger." He shrugged. "Maybe you will too, one day."

"Not my bag," Ros told him confidently, but the way his knowing eyes raked over her face made her feel uncertain. But before she had time to convince him or herself further, he was descending the stairs back into the town and becoming one with the crowds.

**A/N: Sorry for the huge delay between updates. I hope you've enjoyed this - I'll be posting the last chapter later this week. If you have the time to review I'd really appreciate it.**


	5. Chapter 5

_One year later_

The Grid was quiet for once, thank goodness. Ros was getting increasingly frustrated with the level of office chatter, be it Jo and Ruth gossiping about their weekend or Zaf showing off about his new car or Adam planning his son's birthday party. It was all so bloody trivial and Ros refused to engage in such conversations.

But fortunately, she was now faced with a blissful silence - Adam and Harry had popped out for a natter with the Home Sec, Zaf and Jo were off on some op, and Ruth and Malcolm were sorting files in the Meeting Room. Ros took a sip of her forgotten and now stone-cold coffee and rigged up the MI5 personnel files, checking one last time that there was no-one looking over her shoulder.

_Tom_

Obviously it threw up hundreds of results and Ros had to trawl through picture after picture before finding the familiar face in an encrypted file – the reason for it being encrypted becoming apparent as Ros' eyes skimmed a detail at the bottom. He had been decommissioned from the Service over two years ago, but his impeccable operational record before the incidents that led to that decision meant that...

He was now discreetly offered one-off operations from Harry Pearce.

"Interesting read?" Adam's voice was suddenly in her ear and she nearly flinched. Nearly.

"Not really. Just another burn-out," she said with as much coolness as she could muster.

"Tom Quinn? He was a legend here," Adam reminisced, before a crease appeared between his eyebrows. "Why are you digging into him?"

"Just getting to grips with potential familiar faces in the new job," Ros replied sweetly.

"Nah, you won't end up seeing him around. He's a stranger now," Adam told her.

There was something so satisfying about the fact that Adam was so confident that her path and Tom's would never cross. Of course, she could have told him. But being the new girl and being looked down on was a poisonous enough combination and so the thought of a little secret from her superior, the man who everyone doted on, was very appealing indeed.

"I suppose you're right," she replied with a shrug, clicking the cross in the right-hand corner of the file and watching Tom's image disappear from the screen before plucking her empty mug from the desk and getting to her feet. "Coffee?"


End file.
